LARRY Brown just got fired, almost incomprehensibly, after an NBA Championship followed by a run to Game 7. He is hurt, as anyone would be, and feeling insecure, which he has made a career out of in addition to improving basketball teams.

By convenience, the Knicks have one in desperate-as-ever need of improvement, thanks not only to Madison Square Garden’s perpetual pursuit of its next victory at the expense of its next championship, but also because of the floundering charmer at Brown’s door, so desperate to make him feel loved.

Isiah Thomas, who just committed five years to a center, Jerome James, who can’t rebound, can get a Hall of Fame coach on the rebound, which seems like a no-brainer until you look at a history of Garden hirings that make this one seem like just another hair-brained scheme.

It is completely understandable why a general manager with shaky credibility, running a franchise that, given its perpetual business plan, would be happy this season to get back to eighth place, is jumping at this opportunity. We just don’t know why Brown, about to turn 65, with health issues probably only temporarily resolved, wants a job that would take him to almost age 70 to complete, assuming winning-it-all as the goal.

He would be good for Stephon Marbury, who has seen enough teams improve after he left them to have the bulb turned on by someone who the guard knows has won everywhere. Marbury must by now hate the perception of himself as incorrigible, saw what Brown did for Chauncey Billups, and through trial, error and frustration management, can learn to be more of a distributor.

Of course, distributor to whom, Marbury’s essential question, remains the Knicks’ essential dilemma, too, as does the negativity that ran the 28-year-old guard out of New Jersey and Phoenix.

That could change with more winning teammates for Marbury to be positive about. But where are they? And from where do they come without cap space or willingness to go to the bottom to get lucky in a lottery? Thomas’ new plan is to find mid-level young talent and package it for a franchise player, as if ultimate difference-makers like Shaquille O’Neal become available regularly.

The opportunity to get fortunate always exists. But the Knicks are not a short-term fix. And even assuming that Brown wills this team to a defensive mindset, or that he can improve Thomas’ personnel vision, or that Quentin Richardson proves a better signing than Jamal Crawford, where will the Knicks be in a couple years, when Brown is feeling older and probably frustrated with only modest improvement?

The work he would do here will have little effect on his reputation. He doesn’t need to work this season to keep him visible for a better, if not quite as high paying, opportunity next year. There apparently is a desire to, before he dies, coach the team he watched while growing up. You wonder if it’s a death wish.

If Brown stays two years, gets the Knicks back into the playoffs, Jim Dolan can say it was worth it. It will be, one supposes, if the franchise subsequently proves on the upswing thanks to the start Brown gave them and the course stays the same.

But it rarely does after change. And it’s hard to envision a base growing out of this hodgepodge soon. Much easier to foresee is a coach with a history of wanderlust looking for another landing place, one of which might be retirement.

Brown has taken over bad teams, and did stay six years in Philadelphia – where he arrived at age 56.

Three Garden titles since 1940 tell the sad tale of few eras and more intervals, this smelling like the latter. Seeing no results in the interim work of Herb Williams to recommend his long-term hiring, we would rather see Thomas look for the next Jeff Van Gundy or Lawrence Frank for the Knicks to grow around.